


fire exit

by vigilantejam



Series: exercise our sum control [5]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dehumanization, Face Slapping, M/M, Masturbation, all their greatest hits, sorry to chas in particular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vigilantejam/pseuds/vigilantejam
Summary: thanks to robokittens for fucking poisoning my mind with this image i have not been able to shake forweeksit's the big man's 50th. happy birthday, al?
Relationships: Charles Frederick Des Voeux/Stephen S. Stanley
Series: exercise our sum control [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046140
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	fire exit

The meetings have once again resolved little and run late enough to make a hotel in town more enticing than the commute. However, Stanley has already passed one horrendous evening smiling thinly at the golf anecdotes of his colleagues and he has no desire to do so again. In addition to which, a thought had started percolating during the boardroom dinner, no doubt helped along by the claret, but nonetheless it prickles at the back of his neck and makes him extremely aware at all times of the shape of his fist.

He finishes the last of his socially obligated drink and makes his excuses. He isn’t even halfway across the lobby when he takes out his phone. His message history with Charles is a short list of locations and times, scattered with replies of aubergines and crying cats. They’re suggestions, more than anything. If it were pressing he would call. Charles always calls. His last message was just a week ago. No guarantee Charles would answer then, and the chances are made all the weaker by summoning him north of the river. Still, the tightness in Stanley’s hand remains as he swipes over the screen.

_Temple Court Hotel. Room 310._

It’s a chain hotel, but a higher end one. The corridors are a little wider, the carpet a little deeper than the average businessman's doss-house. The lights are lower, the rumble of the railway more distant. The room itself is perfunctory but comfortable, warm and clean and chargeable to expenses. Stanley splashes some warm water on his face and pats down with a soft pristine towel. He pours himself a minibar vodka, one more drink than he is accustomed to having alone. The liquor loosens some of the tension in his shoulders and he rolls the rest out as he loosens his tie, removes and puts away his cufflinks, and turns up his sleeves. His shoes he keeps on.

The knock on the door comes much sooner than he expected, in three soft slow taps. Stanley smiles in the empty room. Wherever Charles had been, it wasn’t at home. It was somewhere closer, in ragged company that had been discarded on receiving his invitation. When he opens the door Charles has his head tilted slightly down, looking all the way up to Stanley’s looming height through his eyelashes, his mouth arranged in an arrogant smirk. He looks loose and confident and eager, and he really makes it all just too _easy_.

Stanley takes a step towards him, and in being herded back into the corridor rather than asked in, Charles doesn’t see Stanley’s arm draw back and lash out. His face doesn't change as the flat back of Stanley's hand connects with his jaw. His eyes widen and eyebrows raise as the whip crack sound fills the air around them, and his head turns as Stanley's knuckles force spittle from his mouth and his fingers splay and sting over his cheekbone. The backhand is hard and fast and flings Charles' smug smile through the air.

Stanley watches Charles dumbly right himself. His expression shifts with a rapid blink from shock to hurt to confusion. He drops his hand away from where it was instinctively drawn up to his face and Stanley watches the shape of his tongue run across the inside of his smarting cheek. Stanley flexes his hand ready to strike again, but the itch and restlessness has gone, dissipated through his arm with the surge of blood and effort. He is content. The momentary lapse in Charles' confidence is over and the light and challenge return to his eyes as he slinks forward toward Stanley again.

“Right,” Stanley says with a sigh and a dangerous smile, stopping him in his tracks. “Goodnight, Charles.”

Stanley takes the single step back into the room and shuts the door.

* * *

* * *

Chas stands and stares at the door for a minute. The finality of the click and lock slowly dawning on him. The dark grain of the wood blurs as his eyes slide out of focus. His hand drifts up to his face again. Before it had been a reflexive soothing, and protecting, now he wants to feel the heat, catch the last of it before it fades. He thinks about knocking again, of course. His hand burns with the effort of not doing exactly that, but he knows what goodnight and a closed door means, however much he wishes it didn’t. He contemplates pressing himself against the wood, scrambling at the peephole for scraps and glimpses. He doesn’t do that either. Instead he accepts his fate, turns on his heel and heads back the way he had arrived barely minutes earlier.

The light in the lift is too bright and his reflection in the three mirrors repeated back at himself too unflattering. His jacket crumpled from being stuffed into a corner, hastily flung on upon receiving Stanley’s text, eager to get here as quickly as possible. He scoffs at himself, feels a couple of inches smaller. He peers closer at the dark circles under his eyes, the red shape across his cheek. He swears he can see the outline of Stanley’s fingers. He can definitely feel the erection Stanley had smacked into life getting heavier in his trousers. _Fuck._

He doesn’t even make it to the lobby. The doors open on the second floor and he pushes past the people standing there and dives beneath the green lit sign of the back stairs. Walking it off doesn’t work and he’s only down half a flight before he’s hunched over in a corner, his arm braced against the cold wall, jerking himself furiously like an impetuous irredeemable schoolboy after a master’s reprimand.

He thinks about calling Stanley, about jamming the phone between his shoulder and ear and waiting for the line to connect and then just letting him listen to the frantic pants echoing off the bare concrete. He’d know that Chas hadn’t even made it out of the building, that he couldn't contain himself even until the alleyway much less a whole tube ride home. Or a lascivious detour into Soho. He’d make some noise of acknowledgement, a small inscrutable hum that would hover between disgust and satisfaction. Chas’ hand flies over his cock and he hears the vibration of that sound as if Stanley were really in his ear and he comes with a gasping moan and a spurt against the stairwell wall.

Chas isn't particularly acquainted with shame, but as his orgasm shudders and dies the reality of his situation rolls over him. His flies and belt hang open around his hips, his hand and cock are still half stuffed in his underwear, his shirttails crumpled and stained with a few strings of jizz. Look at what he’s been reduced to. Disposable, balled up and tossed out, tossing himself off in a wretched corner. He groans at the state of himself and a heat rises again in his cheeks. Why is it _hot?_

On a disgusting impulse he pulls out his phone and takes a photo, is half way through sending it to Stanley before he enters the unending game of doublethink. _Is this what he wants? Do I want to give him what he wants? Will it get me what I want?_  
The moment passes and he doesn’t send the message. Instead he drags his finger through the mess on the wall and traces CDV SS in a slimy heart. The corner of his mouth curls into a stupid grin imagining some poor sod swinging a UV light around in here.

He checks the time. Past the last train now.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to robokittens for fucking poisoning my mind with this image i have not been able to shake for _weeks_
> 
> it's the big man's 50th. happy birthday, al?


End file.
